The Crying Boy

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Another painting that deserves the title "cursed" is the famous "Crying Boy," by an unnamed Spanish painter. Mysterious events occurred just days after the painting's completion, when its artist's studio burned to the ground, and shortly thereafter, the boy depicted was killed by a car.

The painting was copied en masse across Great Britain, and although there is only one original, a curse seems to rest on every copy. It is said to affect anyone who knows the painting's history and possesses a reproduction.

In the autumn of 1985, a series of mysterious fires in Great Britain caught most people's attention. Reproductions of the same painting were later discovered in the burned-out houses. It was "The Crying Boy." Each time, without exception, the painting was intact, despite the utter destruction of everything around it. The case was publicized, in part, by one of the firefighters who helped extinguish the mysterious fires. After firefighter Peter Hall from Yorkshire spoke on the radio about the paintings he had found among the ruins, his disbelieving brother decided to deliberately bring one home. Shortly thereafter, his house also burned down under mysterious circumstances. In this case, too, only the painting of the crying orphan remained intact...

After the first articles about the mysterious phenomenon appeared, newspaper telephone lines were red-hot – hundreds of people with copies of "The Crying Boy" reported similar incidents. Entire family galleries sometimes burned down, and there were even cases of people suffering burns in the fires.

Following a series of unexplained fires, a Shropshire newspaper suggested organising a campaign in which readers would mass-burn copies of the painting on Guy Fawkes Night.

Although most people dismissed the reports of the fires as a temporary respite from the silly season, many suffered months of mental breakdowns, believing the "ghost" of the painting still haunted them. They blamed the painting for bringing death to family members and other misfortunes

On October 12th, Malcolm Vaughan of Church Down, Gloucestershire, helped a neighbor destroy a copy of the painting he owned. However, when he returned, he found one of the rooms in his house engulfed in flames, and firefighters called to the scene were unable to determine the cause. A few weeks later, sixty-seven-year-old William Armitage died in a mysterious fire in Weston-Super-Mare, Avon. A copy of "The Crying Boy," undamaged, was found next to his charred body.

Soon, a statement from one of the firefighters involved in the firefighting operation appeared in the press:

Until now, I hadn't believed all these stories about objects bringing bad luck. However, if I find the only thing in a room ravaged by fire that wasn't destroyed, then that's something very strange...

Strange and terrifying at the same time..